Archive for August, 2009

We stopped watching Lost long enough to sleep the night before our trip. We left about 11am and got to the airport in plenty of time to meet JJ’s mother.

My mother in law, bless her heart, is all Jeju. If you know anything about Jeju women, you will understand exactly what I mean. Jeju is famous for its strong women and JJ’s mom is the epitome of a Jeju woman. Not only did she make 3 friends on the way to security, but she yelled at the airport security officer. The story: Every time I fly, my belt buckle sets off the metal detector. I usually tuck in my shirt, so that it is pretty obvious what is causing all the alarms. Tuesday morning, I forgot to do this and the security officer was taking her sweet time checking me with the hand-held metal detector. JJ’s mom start yelling at her in Korean “Hey! He is my son-in-law. He is with me. He is okay~!” I think the officer felt sorry for me and let me go pretty soon after being yelled out. Score one for Jeju Mom! This wasn’t the end of her antics.  She had a bag full of candy that had been given to her.  She really reminded me of Santa Claus stopping and handing out candy to children we met in the airport and on the plane.  We boarded the plane with no troubles and found our seats. 

The flight to Jeju is only about an hour from Gimpo Airport and we were almost there when she dug into her bag and brought a small bottle of Korean wine.  She had already told us that she wasn’t going to drink . She offered it to me which I immediately rejected. (I have been in Korea way too long) If you don’t know, it is extremely rude to drink when your elders are not drinking. JJ’s mom gave me a hard time about not drinking it; continually saying that it was okay.  Finally, JJ opened it up and we downed it in about a minute or so.  This made the rest of the flight really nice.

I didn’t get any pictures, but the flight attendants also held a rock, paper, scissors contest on the plane.(Only in Korea)  The winner walked flew away with a nice set of shampoo.  We were met at the Jeju airport by JJ’s father and we made our way to their house.

We had a huge dinner after her mom had sorted through the 10 boxes that she had shipped from Seoul. This was the start of me eating way too much in Jeju. It seems to be the theme whenever I meet her mother. JJ and I took off after dinner and headed downtown.  We stopped for some coffee and then checked out an outdoor concert and drank beer along the bayside wall while watching the late night basketball games.

Day two was much more scenic and I will post more tomorrow after I have a chance to process all the photographs that I took.